A Progressive Duck's take on Politics, Media, History, Rock and Roll and whatever else I feel like quacking about

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Pretty Embarrassing

How else to describe the image of George W Bush lecturing "the Arab world Sunday about everything from political repression to the denial of women's rights."

Better still is one of his proscription for achieving peace in the Middle East, "to stand by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora against Hezbollah and to shun Iran over its nuclear program."

Irony was invented with Bush in mind. How else can you process things like this:

"He called on Arab governments to free all "prisoners of conscience" and open up political debate, saying Washington was "deeply concerned" about repression of democracy activists and the closure of newspapers and civil society organizations.

[skip] Nour, who unsuccessfully challenged Mubarak in Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential elections in 2005, is serving a five-year jail term for fraud. He says authorities fabricated the case to block him from politics."

We will not fix the problems in the middle east until the war mongers who are prosecuting this ill begotten misadventure in Iraq to further the profiteering of the Global Warming Corporations and the fundamentally flawed world vision of Dick Cheney leave the stage. The problem is that the damage they have caused will make it profoundly difficult for who ever follows to make any progress, let alone undo the damage.

But they must, and they must by engaging all of the parties. Iraqi or Hamas suicide bombers don't grow up with suicide as their career path, it's thrust upon them by their situation and the miserable old men that "lead" them. Yet those old men are the ones who we have to deal with if we want to stop the insanity of suicide bombers.

Those old men, and the poverty and suspicion and betrayals and heavy handedness of the colonial powers still present today, the poverty and over population, an illegal occupation, the exploitation by the Oil Corporations, all of that has to be addressed by the next President. And you won't get that by ignoring the "terrorists," who exist not for the fun of it all, but because of their desparate situation. So long as we continue to ignore that reality, Senator Obama, the killing and dying will go on, this monumental waste of life and treasure will continue to stain the American character throughout the world.